“Understandably, I’ve been reading recent articles about chimpanzees, as I was the 6-year-old boy depicted in bed with Meshie and sister Jane,” the letter began.

I like to think I know as much about pop culture as the next guy, but this threw me.

“Who the hell is Meshie?” I thought.

The next few sentences cleared it up, sort of:

“My father, Henry Cushier Raven, author of ‘The Anatomy of the Gorilla’ (Columbia University Press) and curator, department of Comparative Anatomy, American Museum of Natural History, was an outstanding scientist, explorer and observer,” Harry Raven wrote. “However, his lengthy absences from his family and his extreme devotion to Meshie at the expense of his family relationships left much heartache. I’m now 82 and still bear a scar on the back of my hand where Meshie bit me. Emotional scars faded with time. She was our father’s pet — the rest of family suffered her presence.”

That was intriguing — and heartbreaking — enough for me to strike up an e-mail correspondence with Harry. He told me he’d been approached to talk about his story over the years, but never did, out of respect for his mother, who was then alive. He sent me old magazine stories about Meshie, which portrayed her as a member of the family, playing with him and his sister, with his own editorial comments scribbled on the side.

“Not true — staged for movie!” he had written on a story about a home movie his father shot about the chimp’s “daily activities.” And, next to a story in The New York Times from Nov. 22, 1934, which showed Meshie holding his baby sister, “Wow! Talk about taking a chance!” It was pretty evident, although Harry seemed to be an extremely polite and well-mannered man, that Meshie had been a childhood competitor, he couldn’t stand the rotten little beast.

Most fascinating, however, was that Meshie was still around, stuffed and preserved in the collection of the Museum of Natural History. This really got my attention. I have people in my past with whom I’ve dreamed of sweet vengeance. We all have. But how often do you have the opportunity to see them stuffed under glass? Talk about a moment to do the Vengeance, Sweet Vengeance, Happy Dance.

It took awhile for Harry to make the arrangements to come into the city from New Jersey, but finally he did, accompanied by his son-in-law and grandson, and after hanging out at the newspaper for a while, and talking, off we went to the museum, where we waited for the photographer to show up under the bones of the great dinosaurs. (“That’s gonna be me in a few years,” I told Harry. “I’m gonna be standing there with my notebook.”)

The museum brought back memories for Harry: He talked about how children in school would tease him and say, “Your brother’s a monkey”; about his father’s adventures in Africa; about his father’s indifference to his family. But he didn’t knock Meshie, unless you count the edge he brought to his imitation of her demanding “Uh-whooo, uh-whooo” grunt. And he sure didn’t do a happy dance when he saw her in the cage. She was just an exhibit in a cage, now, he said; he didn’t hate her, he realized that what happened in the family wasn’t her fault.

It still struck me as pretty sad. I looked at Meshie in the display, stuffed and dead, without her name or anything about her story, and started wondering what life had been like from her point of view. Remember William Holden, in ‘‘Sunset Boulevard,’’ when he sees a monkey laid out in a white coffin? “She must have been a very important chimp,” he says. Meshie had been a pretty important chimp, she had been a guest of honor at a dinner given by the New York Academy of Science and had an obituary in The New York Herald Tribune.

“She cannot have had a very good life,” I said to Harry.

“In the early days she had it pretty good,” he said. “With my father in Africa, he had a wonderful time with her. She was his little pet.”

What was it, 75 years since he saw her alive? But some things just don’t die.

Since it was his father who was the bully, it would have been better to a) true to the headline, have his taxidermied father in the case, or b) use a slightly different headline, like “A Childhood Rival Taxidermied”, rather than “A Childhood Bully,Taxidermied”.

Ditto. I feel sorry for Harry Raven, but he’s had 80 years to make the best of his life – and a chance to do better with his own children. The poor chimp had a short miserable existence. Just another example of why it is ultimately cruel and dangerous to try and treat an exotic animal like a pet.

What really bothers me about this article is how it reflects on the museum. I always loved the place and have fond memories of visiting it when I was young. Always assumed that the people running it held animals in the highest regard. This article kind of implies in a couple of ways that they traveled the world killing things just so they could put together some nice displays. I don’t care if it is in the name of science and education, that is as cruel and moronic as the big game hunter killing something for “sport”. Part of me wants to learn more, but I’m not sure I can stomach it.

The headline really missed the point of the story. Wasn’t the father the bully and not the chimp? As unpleasant a man as the father was, I rather doubt that they stuffed him and put him in a display case….

This reminds me of something I read in John Huston’s autobiography. He did almost the same thing–brought home a chimpanzee. He didn’t have children then, but he let the chimp ruin the house. He makes it clear he enjoyed using her to humiliate his wife and make fun of her materialism. He also enjoyed, even in the retelling, making it clear he preferred the chimp. Interesting that both these stories involve men taking in female chimps.

It’s very touching that Mr. Raven can look back on the time clear-eyed, without anger at the chimp, and realize she was unhappy too. And that he used that experience to know what kind of father he did not want to be. Watching the video, it’s hard to believe any father would sadistically let an animal start to get out of control with his own children and continue filming. That moment where the chimp is grabbing at them in the bed is very disturbing.

In addition to abusing his family, Henry Raven deliberately produced and disseminated a body of lies about living with a wild animal. How much damage that propaganda may have done, and to whom, can only be guessed.

Reminds me of Cheetah, bonded to Weissmuller and treating Maureen O’Sullivan badly, or poor Candice Bergen having to deal with her father Edgar’s clear preference for Charlie McCarthy. They sound like jokes, but they’re not funny.

But Joyce! Grammar, grammar! I can’t help pointing out that “playing with he and his sister” is incorrect; it should be “playing with *him* and his sister.” Otherwise well-told, fascinating follow-up; poignant too. Thanks.

My heart goes out to this man. Sad, sad story, but it has a positive aspect too. Mr. Raven figured it all out, tried to make life better for himself, his wife, and his children, and seems to have made peace with his past. We should all hope to do as well.

My husband and I are neighbors of Harry Raven and his wife. Harry is a brilliant man, as well as a gentle loving husband, father and grandfather. He does acknowledge his father’s flaws but he also is quick to mention his admiration for his father’s contributions to science. There is not an ounce of bitterness in Harry, as Joyce Wadler’s excellent article clearly states.

I am one of Harry Raven’s daughters and can say that my father is a very loving person, especially to each and everyone of his relations!He always wanted daughters and he has two.My sister Lisa Raven and I could not have asked for a better father or mother for that matter!I think he was always afraid to have sons due to his relationship w/ his own father,but he has proven to be an excellent grandfather to his only 3 grandsons,Chris,James & George.All of which carry Raven as their middle name and there is a big reason for that!!!
However,my grandfather may have not been the most affectionate man,but he was a great scientist and the many books I have read about him,prove that he was a very brave man.The several diseases (Malaria & yellow fever) to name a few were definitely cause for a lot of his temperament and also the era of which he lived.Thankfully, my dad and his family of origin pulled through and have produced a bunch of really nice people!!!!
Leslie Raven-Haas

I was surprised to see the photo of Raven posed next to Meshie in the Museum of Natural History- I took a photo of myself in the exact same position about a month ago- not because of the particulars of the individual chimpanzee, but because of the astoundingly outdated labeling of the species- this story mentions that Meshie is labeled as “Chimpanzee troglodytes”- scientific consensus has existed for most of the last century on the genus name for chimpanzees– “Pan”. More recently, because of genetic evidence that humans and chimpanzees are so closely related, scientists have proposed reclassifying chimpanzees within the genus Homo.

According to the timeline described here, Mr. Raven “returned with an orphaned chimp named Meshie..” two years after he set sail in May 1929. That would make Meshie’s birth sometime in 1931.
“In 1934, Meshie was shipped to the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. After she died in 1937, after giving birth..”

Mr. Raven was not the only one who did harm to Meshie. The Brookfield Zoo failed to protect the poor creature as well. Just as it is unsafe for such young human girls to bear children, this unfortunate chimpanzee should not have been mated at so young an age. The crimes against Chimpanzees have not ended — and NASA and others who have used them for research owe it to the remaining chimps in labs and captivity to immediately place them in sanctuaries. Mr. Raven was far from the last to do wrong to a chimpanzee, whether out of ignorance or other motives.

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